If
Mark Twain were living now instead of a century ago -- when he declared
himself “an anti-imperialist” and proclaimed that “I am opposed to having
the eagle put its talons on any other land” -- the famous writer’s views
would exist well outside the frame of today’s mainstream news media.

In the
current era, it’s rare for much ink or air time to challenge the right of
the U.S. government to directly intervene in other countries. Instead, the
featured arguments are about whether -- or how -- it is wise to do so in a
particular instance.

It’s not
just a matter of American boots on the ground and bombs from the sky. Much
more common than the range of overt violence from U.S. military actions is
the process of deepening poverty from economic intervention. Outside the
media glare, Washington’s routine policies involve pulling financial levers
to penalize nations that have leaders who displease the world’s only
superpower.

In Haiti,
abominable poverty worsened during the first years of the 21st century while
Uncle Sam blocked desperately needed assistance.

A former
leading zealot for economic shock therapy, Jeffrey Sachs, was insightful
when he wrote in the March 1 edition of the Financial Times: “The crisis in
Haiti is another case of brazen U.S. manipulation of a small, impoverished
country with the truth unexplored by journalists.” Among the unilluminated
realities: For years, the Bush administration has prevented aid from getting
to one of the poorest nations on the planet.

“The U.S.
maintained its aid freeze, and the opposition (in Haiti) maintained a veto
over international aid,” wrote Sachs, now an economics professor at Columbia
University. “Cut off from bilateral and multilateral financing, Haiti’s
economy went into a tailspin.”

With very
little U.S. press coverage of such economic matters -- and, likewise, scant
attention to the collusion between the Bush administration and disreputable
opponents of the Aristide regime – media acceptance of the current U.S.
military intervention in Haiti was predictable.

Prominent
editorial carping hardly makes up for spun-out news coverage. And in this
case, the day after the coup that U.S. media typically refuse to call a
coup, the New York Times ran a lead editorial about Haiti on March 1 that
mostly let the Bush regime off the hook with a faint reproach.

The Bush
administration, the Times editorialized, was “too willing to ignore
democratic legitimacy in order to allow the removal of a leader it disliked
and distrusted.” The editorial faulted “Mr. Bush’s hesitation” and went on
to say “it is deplorable that President Bush stood by” while men such as two
convicted murderers and an accused cocaine trafficker “took over much of
Haiti.” The editorial’s last sentence muted the critical tone, referring
merely to “mishandling of this crisis.”

Even at
its most vehement, the Times editorial accused the Bush administration of
inaction (“ignore” ... “hesitation” ... “stood by” ... “mishandling”), as
though the gist of the problem was a kind of inept passivity -- rather than
calculated mendacity in the service of an interventionist agenda.

Meanwhile, also on March 1, the Times front page supplied an official story
in the guise of journalism. Failing to attribute a key anecdotal flourish to
any source -- while providing Washington’s version of instantly historic
events -- the newspaper of record reported that Aristide “meekly asked the
American ambassador in Haiti through an aide whether his resignation would
help the country.”

In the
next day’s edition of the Times, the front-page story about Haiti included
Aristide’s contention that he’d been overthrown by the United States. The
headline over that article: “Haitian Rebels Enter Capital;
Aristide Bitter.”

Bitter.

Underneath such news and commentary runs powerful deference to Washington
policymakers, reinforcing interventionist prerogatives even when criticizing
their implementation. A basic underlying assumption that pervades media
coverage has been consistent -- the right to intervene. Not the wisdom of
intervening, but the ultimate right to do so.

In
Port-au-Prince, on March 3, a long-unemployed plumber named Raymond
Beausejour made a profound comment to a New York Times reporter about the
U.S. Marines patrolling the city: “The last time they came they didn’t do
much. This is not the kind of aid we need. They should help us build schools
and clinics and to get jobs.”

It’s
customary for news media to ignore Americans who unequivocally oppose U.S.
military interventions in -- to use Twain’s phrase -- “any other land.”
Journalists are inclined to dismiss such views as “isolationism.” But the
choice is not between iron-fist actions and economic blackmail on the one
hand and self-absorbed indifference on the other. A truly humanitarian
foreign policy, offering no-strings assistance like food and medicine on a
massive scale, is an option that deserves to be part of the media discourse
in the United States.